


Dangerous Lessons Review

by starlitdays



Series: Louise Lombard [4]
Category: Dangerous Lessons (2015)
Genre: Reviews, Screenshots, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-21
Updated: 2018-02-21
Packaged: 2019-03-21 22:19:36
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,237
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13750362
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starlitdays/pseuds/starlitdays
Summary: AKA A Student’s ObsessionChapter One: Liveblog Review (with screencaps)Chapter Two: Extended Review (with screencaps)Chapter Three: Summary Review





	1. Liveblog

**Author's Note:**

> TL;DR: 8/10. But one point comes from my teacher kink and another from my massive crush on Louise Lombard, so 6/10 baseline.
> 
> Slightly NSFW in places, mentions of rape, and also I swear a lot.
> 
> All screencaps featured were taken by me. Feel free to use them, but please let me know and give me credit.
> 
> Cast:
> 
> Louise Lombard as Stephanie Archer (the teacher)  
> Alex Esola as James Dearden (the student)  
> William Haze as Michael Archer (the husband)  
> Ella Wahlestedt as Nicole Archer (the daughter)  
> Jo Marie Payton as Linda (the friend/school administrator)  
> Richard Haylor as Richard Berg (the other teacher)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the flaily liveblog “review” of my thoughts the first time I watched. Unfiltered. Edited for coherence and adding names (as I was liveblogging to a friend and used descriptions to indicate who I was talking about, rather than making her try and keep track of names).

 

There’s this scene where Stephanie’s talking to Linda about James and how he actually engaged in her class, and Linda’s like “maybe he’s got a crush on you” and she’s all “wtf no” and Linda legit spends like a solid 2 minutes telling Stephanie that she’s still hot and apparently she needs to remind her husband of that. And I’m sitting here like “YES YOU ARE LET ME LOVE YOU”

LINGERIE! BLACK SATIN WITH WHITE LACE! HALP!

Also the husband is legit trying to stop her from seducing him and I’m literally actually writing a story/script/something where this happens. … SHE’S KISSING DOWN HIS BODY AND HE STOPS HER THIS IS LITERALLY WHAT I WROTE! Okay so I haven’t written it yet, but I’ve been planning it for more than 10 years

James goes stalkery like, instantly

Louise keeps going back and forth between her natural accent and her fake American accent

Also very fitting that everyone is into her. James and another one of the teachers, Richard. She totally blows him off, tho. I think they’re trying to make the viewer think he’s the stalker, but, y'know, I know better LOL

Aaaand she’s TOTALLY checking out James, YES

Her eyes are unnaturally blue… I wonder if she’s enhancing with contacts

Also, dear makeup artists… plz stop putting tanned blondes in bubblegum pink lipstick. Esp if they’re in their 40s, jesus

Oh my fucking good goddamn I need to cap this scene, the lighting is amazing and it makes Louise look even more beautiful than she already is

FUCK YEAH SHE KISSED HIM BACK

Dear whoever deals with animals on movie sets. That is not a proper terrarium for a snake. Plz don’t.

Good lord. The trope or cliche or whatever where someone says “I know what you’re going to say” and the other person just takes that at face value needs to fucking die

So Richard overheard her talking to James about the kiss and he’s like, creepy obsessed with her, too, so I foresee Bad Things

Dude, you were handling poisonous flowers, don’t just stand there, wash your damn hands

….. James just told his mother “You stay in your place” and like damn. Wish he was a better actor, that could’ve actually been creepy

He literally tried to give her his great-grandmother’s necklace. And now she’s freaking out LOL

“We’re perfect for each other” he says like dude you’ve known her for like a week

Oh honey, you’re pretty, but you’re a dumbass. Going to the stalker boy’s house is in no way a method for fixing the situation. Even if she is going to talk to his mother. Still. Hands off, honey, hands offff

Oh the mom’s gonna talk to him about respecting the teacher’s boundaries, this can only end badly

Damn, her eyes really are that blue, no contacts

Uh oh I think she’s been drugged. Legit unsure by who. Could be the student. Could be the other teacher. They’re both getting kinda stalkery.

Yup, someone put datura flower in her travel mug. Sheeee’s tripping balls.

Okay so I think it was James cuz he overheard that Richard left datura flowers for Stephanie, so he poisoned her to frame him to get her to himself

Oooo there’s a rumor going around the school about her and a student *the plot thickens*

OH MY FUCKING GOD I LOVE YOU BUT YOU’RE A DUMBASS DON’T GET INTO THE CAR WITH SAID STUDENT WHILE ON SCHOOL PROPERTY WHAT THE FUCK

Hey she drives a hybrid, sweet

Oh plz tell me Nicole’s new boyfriend who’s being invited over for dinner isn’t gonna be James like that would just be too much (then again, it is a Lifetime movie…)

She thinks he’s moving on. He’s totally gonna be the boyfriend

CALLED IT

Dude. He’s trying to play footsie with her and her daughter/his “girlfriend” is sitting right there

And now he’s snooping under the pretext of using the bathroom

Tooootally jealous of the actor, he just had his face in her cleavage

And I think Nicole is gonna walk in on him trying to rape her mom. Except, because drama, she’s gonna interpret it as him and her mom about to have sex because, y'know, that’s what happens

Well the daughter didn’t catch them on the bed, but she did witness them coming out of the bedroom, so…

So I read reviews of this about how she should’ve gone to the cops, etc, and legit, she just went to the cops and was literally told there was nothing they could do because he hasn’t hurt her (that they know of) and the activity stopped since Richard has been in jail. Like yeah, she should’ve said something sooner, but it’s not like it would’ve changed anything except that everyone would’ve known about it. And maybe Nicole wouldn’t have dated the guy for 2 weeks. Maybe. Depends on if she knew what he looked like

Richard, entering Stephanie’s house without being invited, staying when she tells you to leave, and grabbing her when she tells you to stop and let her go, is not the way to convince her of your innocence. She already knows they had to let you go due to lack of evidence. Stop being creepy.

Damn dude, James just shanked Richard

So Nicole is still meeting with James, still dating him, even tho he admitted to lying to her. But she likes him, and he says he likes her, so… *teenagers*

I feel like bad things are gonna happen to her

Shit his mom pulled a gun on him LOL

And then immediately gives it up when he takes it, and now he’s gonna kill her

I think

Oh shit, James is telling Nicole that Stephanie made a move on him

He’s a bastard LOL

OH SHIT NO DON’T GO TO HIS HOUSE, NICOLE, DON’T MEET HIS MOM HE’S GONNA KILL YOU

Well, at least Stephanie now has proof that James is crazy, since he sent her a pic of Nicole tied up with a gun to her head. So as soon as shit is sorted out, she can go to the cops and they’ll believe her over him

Honey, that’s not how you get unstuck from a mud hole

But of course, it’s just an excuse to take her car away so she can’t get away from him

Oh his mom’s still alive. Beat to shit, but alive

Oh look, it’s the stalker shrine

Aaaand the dead body of Richard

So I read this one review about how the movie never explains why James likes older women, and like… it totally does. It’s doesn’t come out and say it, but his mom is a light-eyed blonde, as is the teacher at his old school that he stalked, and now he’s talking about how his dad beat him and his mom, and telling Stephanie that she can’t tell the difference between those who love her and those who hurt her. Put those together and you get a pretty clear picture of why he likes older (blonde, light-eyed) women

Oh, but one nice thing… When James was choking Stephanie out, they didn’t have her gasping or anything. She was silent, which makes me happy, because it shows that he was actually, y'know, on his way to killing her. It’s a pet peeve where they have the victim gasping, then going unconscious and immediately “oh they’re dead” and I’m like “that’s not how strangulation works”

HOLY SHIT HIS MOM SHOT HIM

You know that ear-ringing tone they use in movies when things get intense and they wanna heighten that intensity by muffling the sound? That’s the exact tone of my tinnitis and it fucking hurts

“I didn’t think anything so pretty could taste so good” says the husband. Me: “So… you’ve never gone down on your wife, then?”

Oh so she shot him but didn’t kill him

Aaaand now he’s obsessing with his nurse

So it was better than I was expecting. I’m not sure if that’s because, y'know, it was actually better, or if I’m blinded by Louise

Like god DAMN that woman’s attractive


	2. Extended Review

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the actual serious, thoughtful, rather wordy review.

So the movie opens with a shot of Stephanie running/jogging. You will see this a lot. There’s a lot of running in this movie. I’m really not sure why, because other than one scene at the end, it’s never actually relevant. But it’s Louise Lombard in spandex, so I don’t really care much about relevance.

First scene with the family does actually do a lot to show how disconnected they are. Stephanie literally has to text her husband, while standing next to him, to get him to actually listen to what she’s saying. Her daughter brushes off the (very pretty) breakfast she made with a “I can’t eat that, I’m juicing” and when Stephanie asks since when, replies, “It’s all over my blog.” When both leave her sitting alone at the table, the resignation is palpable.

(I couldn't decide which screencap to add, so you get both)

Odd little detail: The car is parked on the lawn. The driveway is long enough for two cars, but the car is parked on the lawn. Why???

The accent is really bothering me. I love Louise Lombard, and she does a near-flawless American accent in other things, but for some reason, it’s really off in this movie, hovering between American and British, with occasional and unexpected forays into Irish. (At first I thought maybe she’s just starting to lose her British accent, becoming a little more Americanized, but Grimm was filmed the same year and she was just as British in that as ever, so I don’t know.)

The teacher lecture voice is really doing it for me, though. (Sorry, that’s my teacher kink coming out.)

I said it in my liveblog review, and I’m saying it again here, that terrarium the snake is in is completely unacceptable. It’s a fish tank with rocks. There’s no heat pad, no hides, and it’s way too small. I know it would’ve been much more expensive to add those things for something that’s only seen a couple times in the movie, but it still bothers me.

Richard’s crush on Stephanie has that uncomfortable feeling of that crush you had when you were 13 and thought you were being casual and subtle about it, but everybody knew because you were all longing eyes and lame excuses to be around them. Which is fine and all, but the man is in his 50s!

I’m unreasonably disappointed at the fact that it’s a body double in the bikini. Some of us would give non-essential body parts to see Louise in a bikini. But aside from that, it’s very obvious that the double is under 25. I’m not particularly opposed to the concept of body doubles if the actor in question doesn’t want to do the shot, but use a double that’s age-appropriate, then it’s not so jarring.

The lingerie still kills me. Every time. Dead. I’m a ghost typing this. Although I will admit that black satin with white lace edging is as far from my favorite as you can get without getting into bad colors (like yellow or orange) or unflattering colors (like bright red). Still, it looks good on her, and is both elegant and sexy. (Although the super obvious bra underneath makes me side-eye. I have no issue with wearing a bra under a satin nightie, as long as it doesn’t look like you’re wearing a bra, in other words, as long as it’s not above the edge of the nightie.)

I wonder how many men would actually stop their wife when she’s kissing her way down his body? I feel like not many. Sure, he’s got a presentation he needs to get finished and all, but I feel like taking half an hour to bang the wife, who is clearly interested, wouldn’t be that much of an imposition. (The stunned expression on her face when he pushes her off is glorious, though.)

Odd little detail: The movie makes a point of showing that Stephanie is in bare feet when she goes to seduce Michael. But in the next scene, taking place right after, while she sits at the table with a glass of wine, she’s wearing heels.

Goof: When Stephanie picks up her phone to receive the first message from James (although she doesn’t know at the time that it’s from him), you can see a delivered text bubble taking up most of the screen. Assumingly it’s from an earlier take, and they just texted a message full of enters instead of deleting the previous messages.

I have an disproportionate love of Stephanie’s (Louise’s) typo when typing “this” (she typed “rh” and corrected herself).

So we had “someone” (who we later find out to be James) taking pictures of Stephanie through the bedroom window during the failed seduction scene, and then Richard takes pictures of her during the field trip. I know they’re doing a bait and switch on that, but it bothers me that the camera overlay is the same. Hell, I think the camera itself is the same. Also hella inappropriate to take pictures of someone without their knowledge or consent. I get it in the case of James, he’s both a teenager and a stalker, but Richard is a grown-ass man, he should know better.

Goof: They say the field trip is to the Keys, but where they actually go is the Everglades (and Richard confirms this. “Why are they called the Everglades?”)

Goof: Stephanie and James sit on one side of the airboat while it’s moving and the other side when it’s stationary.

I do like how they showed that Stephanie is drawn to James and conflicted about it. Checking him out from her hotel room window (when he was in just a pair of shorts, dripped wet from an ocean swim), then panicking and hiding behind the wall when he noticed, and later, her gaze repeatedly straying in his direction as she carried on a conversation with Richard.

The very cute, very short student who gets Stephanie to dance with them is the MVP of this scene. But what high school student wants to socialize with their teacher? (I mean, I always did, but I had a giant crush, so…)

I will never get over the lighting for the beach scene. Louise is a gorgeous woman, and this lighting just showcases that so well.

Goof: Stephanie starts on her phone, but when the scene shifts, her phone is nowhere in sight, and at the end of the scene, she leaves in the opposite direction to where she left her shoes and purse.

Goof: Stephanie falls straight backwards off a rock, lands on her butt, but scrapes her knee.

As above with liking how they show her draw to James, I really like the little detail of her faintly alarmed look when he whips his shirt off, paired with biting her lip. Sort of comes across as “Oh god what is he doing, and do I actually want him to stop?”

Stephanie’s discomfort and awkwardness in this scene is palpable and it’s great. Louise kills the subtle expressions and body language (especially the body language, it’s what I love most about her acting).

I’m not totally sure why this choice was made, but the fact that Stephanie continues to actively kiss James even as she’s pulling back from him and pushing him away is interesting. I read it as her being tempted by the feeling of being wanted while her brain screams at her that this is a mistake. Then again, I read her entire draw to James as being due to the feeling of being wanted, started by Linda’s comment earlier in the movie about James maybe having a crush on her.

When she does pull away from the kiss and starts to leave, she looks like she wants to apologize, and again I don’t know why that acting choice was made, but it makes the character feel very real to me.

Pet peeve: So, the car that follows Stephanie around on her run, and was also driven by the guy taking photos of her, is a silver Mazda. James drives a gold Buick, and Richard drives a blue Mazda. They never explain where the silver Mazda came from!

Stephanie’s muted panic when James shows up for class after he was supposed to have been transferred feels so much like when I have a panic attack I’m trying to hide that it makes me uncomfortable. Which I suppose is a good thing.

Goof: James shows up late for class, but his book and bag are already there.

I feel like there was an editing mistake in this movie. Specifically that the scene between Richard and Linda, where he tells her he knows what’s going on between Stephanie and James, should have been  **after**  he eavesdropped on their conversation. Or at the very least there should have been some indication that he suspected something before he mentioned it. (Show him noticing them exchanging looks or something, but this scene comes out of the blue and leaves you wondering how on earth he knows something’s up.)

This is another thing I mentioned in my liveblog review, but this trope of Person A saying “I know what you’re going to say and I agree” and Person B just taking that at face value and going with it needs to die. Do people actually do that? Clear communication, people. Just because something is uncomfortable to talk about, if it’s important, you say the words anyway. Otherwise you might end up with someone trying to kiss you when you think they realize the previous kiss was a mistake.

And because I am absolute trash, at the “You kissed me” / “Wait, you kissed me” exchange, I’m sitting here like: 

[Originally posted by marvel-dc-addict](https://tmblr.co/ZP_q7j2F5C8It)

Stephanie says “James, I’m your teacher, this can’t happen” after James is transferred out of her class. So I had to have a conversation with my best friend (who lives in Florida) about whether a teacher can have a relationship with a student if they’re not in a class the teacher teaches. I’m really glad my friend knows me well enough to not give me side-eyes over the things I ask her. (For the record, no, they can’t have a relationship if they’re at the same school, but if they’re at different schools it’s okay. But it’s a moot point in this case because James is 17 and age of consent in Florida is 18. [And also he’s psychotic, but again, I’m trash, so…])

Goof: Linda touches the snake four times before it actually bites her. I don’t know about anyone else, but if I reached blindly into a drawer and felt something scaly and animate, I’d yank my hand the hell outta there.

The entire dinner scene I’m always distracted by Louise holding the fork upside down. I know it’s a British thing, but as a Canadian, it’s really weird. (Actually the only reason I know it’s a British thing is because my sister’s mom went to England and specifically mentioned that everyone eats with their forks upside down. I never really thought about it until I watched this movie and noticed Louise doing it.)

“Who in their right mind would bring a snake to class?” Michael wonders, and the look of “That would be me, honey” that Stephanie has makes my day.

I’m really disappointed in the scene between James and his mother where he tells her to stay in her place. I can’t even pinpoint what’s wrong about it, but it just doesn’t hit the emotional resonance that I feel it should. James comes across as  _trying_ to be threatening, but not quite succeeding, and his mother seems more annoyed/exasperated than afraid or concerned.

Why in the hell would Richard physically shove James against a wall in front of other students? And how did he get away with it? Although I do like James’s “Richard. You’ll never have her.”

The insistence James has that he and Stephanie talk right at that moment, regardless of how busy she is, is an interesting thing for me. It felt like they were trying to say “look how he’s becoming unhinged” (which is, of course, demonstrated even more dramatically when he tries to give her his great-grandmother’s necklace and then insists that they’re perfect for each other) but to me, and with the experiences I’ve had with men, I read it more like “look at this guy being… a guy.” A man acting like he’s entitled to a woman’s time and attention isn’t in indicator that he’s losing sight of reality, it’s just another day in the life of a woman.

So the movie establishes that James lives in Redland and the school is in Coconut Creek, and Stephanie, when going to talk to James’s mother, says that she “had some free time.” Redland and Coconut Creek are an hour and a half drive apart. That’s 3  **hours**  round trip. And this is all during the same day that she has a confrontation with James, a confrontation with Richard, and gets poisoned. This movie suffers some serious timeline issues, and this isn’t the only example.

I’d really like to have thoughts about the confrontation scene between Richard and Stephanie, but my thoughts through the whole thing were pretty much just “holy shit her eyes are so blue” with a brief note at the end that Richard looked super shifty picking up Stephanie’s bag like that and why would he only take her bag and not her cup and papers, too?

I know it was the point of the editing, but the scene where Stephanie is tripping balls makes me so nauseous. (Also shoutout to them using a different take of the beach kiss for Stephanie’s hallucination.)

I have Very Strong Feelings about Stephanie being at home and not in the hospital after being poisoned. She was out for “about 24 hours,” hallucinating, and they haven’t identified the toxin? Yeah, she’d be in the hospital on an IV. (Also they don’t know what the toxin is, but they know that if she’d ingested any more of it, she would’ve died? I call bullshit.)

Oh good lord, my least favorite scene with my least favorite character. The acting by the woman who played the detective is **terrible**. It’s so bad. It hurts.

Another thing that I yelled about in my liveblog review, but no teacher who was just told there were rumors going around about her and a student would get into a car with the aforementioned student. Especially in this case where she knows what student the rumors are about, because there’s some truth to them, and she knows he’s obsessed with her! Like talk about bad life decisions.

I’ve watched this movie about 10 times now, and I still don’t know if James was actually hit by this mystery boyfriend of his mom’s or by his mom, herself. The first time I watched it, I assumed it was his mom that hit him, because of her comment about making sure that James left Stephanie alone. Now I’m less sure.

And here we have another timeline/continuity issue. On the day Stephanie is asked to take time off (at least 3 days after she’s poisoned), she tells James to find a girl his own age. A couple short scenes later, Nicole tells Stephanie that it’s been nice having her around “this past week” but also that she’s been dating a new guy (who turns out to be James) for “a couple weeks.” This means either that the continuity is messed up, or that James started dating Nicole preemptively for no discernible reason. (Also Louise looks  **so**  much like Jane Seymour in this scene between Stephanie and Nicole.)

Goof: Stephanie’s hair style changes between the time the doorbell rings and actually answering the door.

Soooo the scene where James attacks Stephanie in her bedroom. I have mixed feelings about this scene. Partly because I’m trash and love problematic ships so anything showing them kissing makes me happy. Partly because there’s very little in way of Stephanie fighting him off up until the point where she actually pushes him off of her. And partly because the concept of being sexually assaulted in your own home is terrifying and makes my heart hurt for the character.

How Nicole doesn’t make the intuitive leap to “my boyfriend and my mom were just doing questionable things” I’ll never know. They were in the bedroom with the door closed and the sound of heavy breathing audible from the hallway. When the door opened, he was standing by the bed, breathless. There’s trusting people, and there’s being willfully ignorant.

Richard continues to make terrible life choices that a man his age should know better. Makes me wonder if he has some kind of impulse control issue. Here he breaks into Stephanie’s home while she’s in the pool, in order to talk to her and tell her that the police had to let him go because there wasn’t enough evidence that he was the one who poisoned her. He keeps assuring her that he’s not there to hurt her, but he also keeps grabbing her wrists and ignoring when she tells him to leave.

I do have to wonder how James knows where his teachers live. Knowing where Stephanie lives is one thing, it’s not unreasonable to assume that he followed her. But waiting at Richard’s house for him to come home? There’s no reasonable explanation for how he knew where Richard lived. (Also, I was actually not expecting James to murder Richard, so that was a nice surprise. Why he decided to do it in the driveway with the headlights shining on him, who knows, but…)

The music in this movie is ridiculously over the top. Just putting that out there. Stephanie is on a run, and the music is so hilariously ominous it’s actually distracting.

The scene where James’s mom pulls a gun on him really doesn’t work. We know she’s not going to actually shoot him (at this point). She’s spent the entire movie making excuses for him and literally helped him deal with Richard’s body three scenes ago. And once James takes the gun from her and goes after her, there’s this awkward beat where she’s supposed to run into the trailer, but he’s closer to the door, so he has to pause in going after her to let her get in the trailer. It’s just awkward all around.

Goof: Linda says that James’s old school was Andrew Jackson. Andrew Jackson High School is in Jacksonville, which is a 5 ½ to 6 hour drive from Redland, where he lives. (And he couldn’t have moved since then, because he states that his dad, who he murdered 4 years previous, is buried on the property.)

Goof: When Stephanie gets the call from James that he has Nicole, she’s wearing her sleeves normally, around her wrists. But when she gets her car stuck in the mud, she’s got her thumbs through the thumb holes (and continues to wear it like that through the rest of the sequence).

Goof: Stephanie (Louise) gets the car unstuck from the mud, but lets it roll back in (because that’s what’s in the plot).

Hey look, a running scene  _with a purpose_!

I would like to know how James and his mother can afford to keep horses. They’re very much coded as “white trash,” his mother’s clearly an alcoholic without a job, and yet the property they live on has a nice house/stable, and horses.

Goof: It’s dusk when Stephanie climbs the stairs of the house, and it’s pitch black out when she opens the front door.

Odd Little Detail: Possibly a goof, but there’s only about 6 unique portraits of Stephanie in James’s stalker shrine. Each has several copies, though. (And one drawing annoys me because it’s in a  **completely**  different style and looks nothing like her.)

This entire confrontation between James and Stephanie is good, hits the emotional marks (for the most part), but what really puts it into the realm of awesome for me is when she’s got her hands cupping his face, and there’s this moment where she’s holding his face and looking at him and sort of ever-so-slightly swaying in place, and it looks like she’s trying to make herself kiss him, to placate him, but can’t actually do it. It’s those little details that really sell the performance and the character.

Yet another thing I mentioned in my liveblog review, but I really like the realistic strangling scene. It’s a pet peeve of mine when scenes showing one character strangling another involve lots of gasping, choking, and gagging. If a person is making noises, it means air is getting into their lungs, and thus they’re not being effectively strangled. (My extensive knowledge of true crime really only comes in handy to critique TV and movies.) But in this, when James chokes Stephanie, she’s quiet (fighting him, but without vocalizations), and that shows that she is  _actually_ being strangled. He’s  _actually_  on his way to killing her.

Goof: When Stephanie goes to Nicole, she takes the gag off, but doesn’t untie Nicole’s hands, yet Nicole pulls her hands from behind her back as if she had been untied.

I know it’s all about ending on a high note and all with the breakfast scene, but I really hope that Stephanie and Nicole get some therapy after that whole ordeal. (Dude, it’s a movie, you say. Yes, I know, but in case you haven’t picked up on it by now, I like my realism.)

How on earth would James get his nurse’s number while in police custody in the hospital? And why is he (apparently) leaving with bandages soaked through with blood?


	3. Summary Review

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the shorter review, if you don’t want to read my flaily or wordy reviews.

The little details can make or break a scene, and there are, unfortunately, a lot of little details that break the immersion in this movie. There are also many that make it, most of which come from Louise Lombard, who largely carries the movie. (Despite having the most inconsistent accent I’ve ever heard from her.)

Ella Wahlestedt and Jo Marie Payton are great as well in the supporting roles of Nicole and Linda, respectively. Richard Haylor, William Haze, and Carole Wood (James’s mom) give solid, believable performances but are lacking in any “spark” that makes them stand out. Alex Esola misses the mark a couple times, but is overall decent. Brooklyn Murphy (Detective Meyers) stands out as being the only truly bad performance, but thankfully is only in four scenes.

The movie suffers from a high cheese factor, most noticeable in the score (which can sometimes be distractingly dramatic). The editing is at times choppy and nonsensical, and the continuity/timeline of the movie suffers from some serious issues as well, making it seem like the entire movie takes place over a shorter period of time than it actually must.

Despite the above criticisms, however, it is an enjoyable movie. The characters all have appropriate chemistry and believable motivations, and the storyline has an even flow.

Regardless of its problems, Dangerous Lessons is a movie I definitely recommend to any fan of Louise Lombard, and one I might recommend in general (depending on one’s thoughts on the subject matter).


End file.
